Hardly had I turned the corner into Piccadilly, when I heard a voice at my elbow uttering my name with a foreign accent.
Turning quickly, I saw, to my great surprise, a man named Engler, whom I had known in Bremen. He was a clerk in the Deutsche Bank, opposite the Liebfrauen-Kirche, and popular in a certain circle in that Hanseatic city.
"My dear Meester Jacox!" he exclaimed in broken English in his enthusiastic way. "My dear frendt. Well, well! who would have thought of meeting you. I am so ve-ry glad!" he cried. "I have only been in London since three days."
I shook my friend's hand warmly, for a year ago, when I had spent some time beside the Weser watching two men I had followed from London, we had been extremely friendly.
I told him that I was on my way to my rooms, and invited him in to have a chat.
He gladly accompanied me, and when we were comfortably seated in my cosy sitting-room he began to relate to me all the latest news from Bremen and of several of my friends.
Otto Engler was a well-dressed, rather elegant man of forty, whose fair beard was well trimmed, whose eyes were full of fire, and who rather prided himself upon being something of a lady-killer. He was in London in connection with an important financial scheme in which his brother and a German merchant in London, named Griesbach, were interested. He and his brother Wilhelm were over on a visit to the merchant, who, he told me, had offices in Coleman Street, and who lived in Lonsdale Road, Barnes.
There was a fortune in the business, he declared, which was the discovery of a new alloy, lighter than aluminium, yet with twenty times the rigidity.
That evening we dined together at the "Trocadero," looked in at the Empire, and returned to the club for a smoke.
Indeed, I was delighted to have found an old friend just when I was in deepest despair of the dullness of everything, and of Christmas in particular.
Otto Engler had one failing--his impudent inquisitiveness. After he had left me it occurred to me that all the time we had been together he had been constantly endeavouring to discover my recent movements, where I had visited of late, where I intended spending Christmas, and my subsequent movements.
Why did he desire to know all these particulars? He was a busybody, I knew, and the worst gossip in the whole of that gossip-loving city on the Weser. Therefore I attributed his inquisitiveness to his natural propensity for prying into other people's affairs.
"Ah! my dear friend," he had said as he gripped my hand on leaving me, "they often speak of you in Bremen. How we all wish you were back again with us of an evening at the Wiener Cafe!"
"I fear I shall never go back," I said briefly. "Business nowadays keeps me in London, as you know."
"I know--I know," he replied. "Remember, you have always had a true friend in Otto Engler--and you always will, I trust."
Then he had entered the taxi which the hall-porter had called for him.
Next afternoon he called upon me at New Stone Buildings, as we had arranged. Ray Raymond was seated with me. I introduced him, and we spent a pleasant hour, chatting and smoking. Ray had also been in Bremen, and the two men had, they found, many mutual friends. Then, when he had left, Ray declared himself charmed by him.
"So different to the usual German," he declared. "There's nothing of the popinjay about him, nothing of the modern military fop of Berlin or Dresden, men who are, in my estimation, the very acme of bad breeding and degenerate idiocy."
"No," I said. "Engler is quite a good fellow. I'm glad he's found me. I expected to be deadly dull this Christmas."
"So do I," replied my friend. "I've got a wire this morning from the Admiral saying he is down with influenza, and the Christmas house-party is postponed. So I shall stay in town."
"In that case we might spend Christmas day together," I suggested.
This was arranged.
My German friend Otto saw me daily. I was introduced to his brother, Wilhelm, a tall, thin, rather narrow-eyed man who, from his atrocious German, I judged was from Dantzig. It was one evening in the Cafe Royal that I first saw Wilhelm, who was seated playing dominoes with a rather stout, middle-aged man in gold-rimmed spectacles, Heinrich Griesbach.
Both men expressed delight at meeting me, and I invited the trio to my rooms for a smoke and a gossip.
We sat until nearly two o'clock in the morning. Griesbach had been many years in London, and was apparently financing the scheme of the brothers Engler, a scheme which, on the face of it, seemed a very sound undertaking.
All three were thorough-going cosmopolitans, cheery, easy-going men of the world, who told many quaint stories which caused my room to ring with laughter.
Next day was Christmas Eve, and Griesbach suddenly suggested that if I had nothing better to do he would be delighted if I would join their party at dinner on Christmas night at his house over at Barnes.
"I regret very much," I said, "but I've already arranged to dine with my friend Raymond, who shares chambers with me in Lincoln's Inn."
"Oh!" exclaimed Otto Engler, "I'm sure Herr Griesbach would be very pleased if he came also."
"Of course!" cried the German merrily. "The more the merrier. We shall dine at eight, and we'll expect you both. I'll send a note to Mr.
Raymond, if you'll give me his address."
I gave it to him, and nothing loath to spend the festival in such jovial company, I accepted.
I entertained a shrewd suspicion that by their hospitality they wished to enlist my aid, because I had one or two friends in the City who might, perhaps, assist them materially in their scheme. And yet, after all, Otto Engler had often been my guest in Bremen.
Next day I heard on the telephone from Ray that he would go down to Barnes with me, and would call for me at six at Guilford Street.
Curiously enough, I had become so impressed by the possibilities of the new alloy about to be exploited with British capital, that I had really become anxious to "go in" with them. Ray Raymond, too, was much interested when I showed him the specimen of the new metal which Engler had given me.
"Do you know," said he when he called for me at six o'clock on Christmas evening, "I was about town a lot yesterday and I'm quite certain that I was followed by a foreigner--a rather big man wearing gold spectacles."
"Nonsense!" I laughed. "Why should you be followed by any foreigner?"
"It isn't nonsense, my dear Jacox," he declared. "The fellow kept close observation on me all yesterday afternoon. When I got back to Bruton Street, I looked out half an hour afterwards and there he was, still idling outside."
"Some chap who wants to serve you with a writ, perhaps!" I laughed grimly. "A neglected tailor's bill!"
"No," he said. "He's watching with some evil intent, I'm certain. I expect he's somewhere near, even now," he added.
"Why!" I laughed. "You seem quite nervy over it! Next time you see him, go up to the Johnnie and ask him what the dickens he wants."
Then, half an hour later, I put on my hat and coat, and together we took a taxi past Kensington Church and Olympia, to Hammersmith Bridge, over which we turned off to the right in Castelnau, into a long ill-lit thoroughfare, running parallel with the river. Bare trees lined the road, and each house was a good-sized one, standing in its own grounds.
Before one of these, hidden from the road by a high wall, and standing back a good distance from the road, the cab pulled up, and, alighting, we opened the gate, and passing up a well-kept drive pulled the bell.
Our summons was answered by a thin, rather consumptive-looking German man-servant, who took our coats and ceremoniously ushered us into a big well-furnished drawing-room, where Griesbach and his two friends were already assembled awaiting us. All were smoking cigarettes, which showed that no ladies were to be present.
The instant Ray entered the room I saw that he gave a start, and a few moments later he seized an opportunity to whisper to me that the man who had so persistently followed him on the previous day was none other than our host Griesbach.
"Don't worry over it, my dear old fellow," I urged. "What motive would he have? He didn't even know you!"
And then the gossip became merry in that room so seasonably decorated with holly, while Griesbach assured us of his delight in having us as his guests.
Dinner was served in the adjoining room, and a most excellent and thoroughly English repast it was. Our host had been long enough in England, he told us, to appreciate English fare, hence we had part of a baron of beef with Christmas pudding afterwards, and excellent old port and nuts to follow.
Two young Germans waited at table, and the party was as merry a one as any of us could wish. Only Ray seemed serious and preoccupied. He was suspicious I knew--but of what?
I now openly confess that I pretended a gaiety which I certainly did not feel, for after Raymond had told me that he had recognised Griesbach, a very strange thought had occurred to me. It was this. As we had entered the garden to approach the house, I felt certain that I had caught sight of the figure of a man crouching against one of the bushes in the shadow. At the time I had thought nothing of it, so eager was I to meet my friends. Yet now, in face of Ray's whispered words, I grew very suspicious. Why had that man been lurking there?
When the cloth had been cleared and dessert laid, the elder of the two servants placed upon the table before our host a big box of long crackers covered with dark green gelatine and embellished with gold paper.